


Your Name is Rose Lalonde

by GraciousVictory



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU in a sense, Existential Crisis, F/F, Gen, I'm mad after the Epilogue, Multi, some OCs are mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 07:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18544996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraciousVictory/pseuds/GraciousVictory
Summary: Rose Lalonde has a one-sided conversation with you, Rose Lalonde





	Your Name is Rose Lalonde

**Author's Note:**

> i mean i'm not the only one who's going to be posting something like this but fuck if i'm not gonna post it

Your name is Rose Lalonde.  
  
Or, more accurately, my name is Rose Lalonde, as I'm fuck deep in the throes of talking to my own damn self.  
  
My name is Rose Lalonde.  
  
Or, again, not to be pedantic except that's one of my favorite pastimes, but my name is actually Rose Maryam-Lalonde.  
  
I'm a Goddess? Literally, and on my more self-satisfied days, figuratively as well.  I live on Earth C with my wife, who is an alien.  Though, I suppose, not an alien within the social construct that is Earth C.  Or, rather, she's just as alien to it as I am, despite the fact that both of our respective species are native to this very world.  We have two children, a human and a troll, named Persephone and Hecate, respectively.  I'm sorry, by the way.  
  
You may have shrugged and asked, innocently enough, "For what?", but we both know how goth you assumed I was just by hearing those two names.  And you likely smiled and nodded and wondered just how goth things would get in this rambling account of the current state of the entirety of my being.  
  
The answer is, "Far more goth than any of us is prepared to admit".

Of course, as has been stated before, I'm talking to myself, so, really, I should have known the answer to that before I even proposed said question to myself.  Really, it would behoove me to stay "on the ball" as it were, and I feel like I should address the elephant in the room, which I imagine has relieved itself quite generously and is now looking between every Rose in this bouquet of one as if trying to get a handle on when, exactly, someone is going to acknowledge it exists long enough to clean up after it.

I've been getting visions.

I'm a Seer, so I suppose this isn't much of a shock.  I don't expect handkerchiefs to drop or gasps to be uttered in response to said proclamation, though, as always, a few scandalized looks are most appreciated.  
  
I've been seeing...everything.  
  
It's a bit taxing, as you might imagine.  Some days, I find myself spread thin.  Some days, I can hardly get out of bed.  
  
But...at the same time, I feel as though I've dodged a bullet.

To be as eloquent and succinct as I can, shit gets fucked up out there, y'all.  
  
Sometimes things go better, sometimes they go worse, and sometimes they get fucked so sideways it's nigh-impossible to recognize it as possibly being parallel to my own life.  
  
But it happens?  It is happening.  It will always happen.  Things never stop happening, even when they have no immediate bearing on my life or existence or anything that has occurred since the end of the dreaded 'game'.  
  
And I see them.  Not stirrings of possibility or fate, but all things which are under the purview of Light, that being in part the sum total of knowledge.  
  
And I think I understand the concept of the Ultimate Self.  
  
I have seen so many broken things.  So many fractured timelines and empty sessions and byzantine mazes of hijacked narrative over hijacked narrative.  So many possibilities and disasters by degrees and also so many wonderful things I could comprehend and also, a timeline where we have eight kids?  So that's fucked up but true.  
  
And I understand that the realizations inherent in this cascade of befucked realizations could kill me.  
  
Or, rather, that I could cease to be.  That I could become something less, something broken.  Something not Me.  
  
Maybe not even Not Rose.  Maybe just a shadow of what I am.  
  
I could be paralyzed and withdrawn and I realize that I may already be a shadow.  
  
That life and existence means nothing in the face of an endless maze of possibility.    
  
That a part of me wants to give in and embrace the infinite and to become something beyond human, beyond understanding, beyond--  
  
Your name is Rose Lalonde and your daughter has knocked something over.  
  
You sit up in bed from where you were absolutely not sleeping.  You put a hand on your wife's shoulder, stilling her from her half-hearted stirrings to inspect the source of the noise.  
  
She's beautiful, even at a glance.  Even in this stolen moment of watching the moonlight dappled over her bare arm through the window, Kanaya Maryam-Lalonde is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.  She's a warrior and a mother and she's more than that, a seamstress and a defender and so damn intelligent and even when you hear her bitter, like she often is, even then her voice makes your heart feel something you never want to be 'beyond', you never want to be too much of a shadow to not feel.  
  
The thought makes your stomach churn.  You get up and put on a robe and go to inspect the damages.  
  
\---  
  
The kitchen is dark.  There's a cat on the table, and he leans into your hand when you give him an absent-minded pat on the head.  
  
There is a full, whole loaf of bread on the ground.  
  
You know that this is Persephone's work, in part because Hecate doesn't have opposable thumbs, yet, and also because if she could adequately work the breadbox then she wouldn't get trapped in it on a nigh-daily basis.  
  
You pick up the bread and inspect it for damages.  It looks as though it's been licked by what you're guessing is the meowing culprit on the kitchen table, but there's no sign of your daughter.  
  
Your daughter.  
  
You never thought of yourself much as a parent.  
  
I say you, but I never stopped being you, and you never stopped being Rose Lalonde.  
  
Well, again.  Rose Maryam-Lalonde.  
  
But, to digress, here I am, with two kids, one of whom is a dangerous, half-feral beast with a love for causing mayhem, and the other of whom is a troll.  
  
Some days, I don't know how I got here.  
  
I don't remember the small steps between everything.  I don't remember the twofold adoption measures.  I remember...other events.  
  
I don't want to talk about them.  They don't matter.  
  
I mean, they do.  Everything matters, which is one of the hardest things I've ever had to tell myself, one of the hardest things I've ever had to face.  
  
Everything matters.  The world is full of missed opportunities but it's also full of opportunities made at just the right moment.  
  
Things you do, right or wrong, at just the right time to cause something incredible.  
  
In some realities, we never adopt.  Sometimes, we never get the chance.  Sometimes we drift apart.  
  
Sometimes someone intercedes.  
  
But none of that matters  _here_.  
  
You put the bread back in the breadbox and decide that it also doesn't matter that the cat has licked the bread.  It's a mistake to assume that, as cat owners, everything you own isn't covered by a layer of cat fur, saliva, both, or worse.  And while it was on the floor for considerably longer than five seconds, the same rules don't apply on Earth C because that's a proclamation I have the ability to make right now, in front of God--myself--and everything.

I'm getting off track.  
  
You didn't realize there ever was a track.  You're also messing with tense a lot, but it's your rant, so, you decide to not really worry about it.  
  
You stop by the bedrooms and peer inside.  Hecate is in her grub crib, messily eviscerating a teddy bear in her sleep.  It's honestly adorable in a way you have trouble quantifying.  The less human she acts, the more you love her, and you take a moment to sigh fondly at the moonlight glittering off her jade carapace.  
  
The word 'Jade' stays in your head for a moment.    
  
She's...well.  
  
You wish you'd interacted with her more, during your big adventure.  
  
You interact with her quite a bit these days, too.  She's not here, now, but you know it won't take her long to come back.  
  
You and Kanaya are wives.  You also, collectively, have a girlfriend.  It's a pretty good arrangement, honestly.  
  
From what you've seen, it might actually be the best possible arrangement.  
  
It doesn't exist in some realities, even in some good realities.  
  
But you complete each other in a way you wouldn't be able to, alone.  
  
You haven't said you loved Jade yet, though, because what are you, a completely different person?  One who just says things to people? 

If only you were.

That would be easier.  
  
You pass by Persephone's room, where she's pretending to sleep after her attempted bread-heist.  You honestly don't even know what she was planning to do with it.  You don't understand her completely, but you greatly admire her unflinching desire for chaos and mischief.  You love her, too.  
  
You don't say it often.  You can't say it often.  
  
Genuine emotions, sincerity, have never come easily to you.  
  
You walk back to bed and sit on the edge of it as you get another flare of understanding.  It makes you double over and hold your head.  
  
There's so much you could do, so much you could be.  
  
You could understand everything, be a part of an Ultimate Whole, apart from everything you need to be.  
  
You could be The Rose.  
  
You may be becoming it against your will.  
  
You look back at your wife, asleep in the moonlight.  You put your hand on her arm and think about waking her.  
  
You haven't talked to her about this.  You haven't talked to anyone about this.  
  
You suppose you don't know what good it would do, but a part of it is because you are proud.  
  
It's odd, feeling pride and inadequacy in equal measures, constantly, but you suppose that's just Rose Lalonde.  
  
Who you are.  
  
Who I am.  
  
I settle down on the bed and I put my arms around my wife.  I let my wedding band tap against hers as I nestle my arms above hers.  
  
I have two children, a girlfriend, and a wife.  
  
I have so much and a part of me, a deep frustrated part of me, is asking me why I can't just accept it.  
  
Why there has to be a crisis, why I have to be breaking a little bit at a time, why I have to be hyperfocusing on this.  
  
And honestly.  
  
I nestle my head against her head, that lovely, fluffy hair.

I want to wake her, but I don't.  
  
I should wake her.  
  
I should tell her, or Roxy or Dave or John or Jade or their hot mom or hell, even fucking Jake.  
  
Anyone.  
  
I feel so much, all the time.  
  
All of these feelings from contextualizing the knowledge my primitive primate brain isn't ready to process but does anyway.  
  
I wonder if apotheosis ever actually stops.  
  
If eventually I'll be something distant and alien, too distant and alien to...  
  
I feel the cool hand and the cold metal of the ring and in that moment, I'm grounded.  
  
Maybe there's a way things were supposed to happen.  
  
Maybe this is it, maybe this isn't.  
  
It doesn't matter, here.  
  
It doesn't have to matter.  
  
All of that knowledge, all knowledge, everywhere, is stretched before me and I'm trying to compartmentalize and contextualize it and be better than it.  
  
But it doesn't matter.  
  
Sometimes things don't have to matter.  
  
Sometimes the only thing that's need to matter, in an endless stream of possibility and an overflowing clusterfuck of knowledge that threatens to overwhelm me

Is that I am Rose Maryam-Lalonde.  
  
I live with my wife, and my daughters, and occasionally, my girlfriend.  
  
And maybe I could be some great and powerful being beyond human comprehension.  
  
Maybe I always have been that.  
  
And maybe tomorrow I'll talk to my wife, and my mother, and my friends.  
  
And maybe we'll find a way to make everything more bearable.  
  
But right now  
  
All that matters  
  
Is that you are Rose Lalonde, and you are loved, and your wife, and your bed, are very comfortable.


End file.
